Qualcomm's sample headset teases what's next for mobile VR

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The company also announced a new Artificial Intelligence Engine coming with Snapdragon 845, as well as the older 835, 820 and 66 mobile platforms. This can allow for increased battery life or higher resolution displays.

Qualcomm previewed Always Connected PCs in late December at the Snapdragon Technology Summit, and later this year, OEMs such as HP, ASUS, and Lenovo will begin shipping the first products to stores shelves and carriers.

Qualcomm is ready to show off more about what its Snapdragon 845 system architecture can do for the future of VR. Qualcomm's new VR reference platform built around its Snapdragon 845 offers more processing grunt and capabilities.

It is said to offer a 30% increase in performance, 30% improvement in power efficiency and more than double the display throughput of the Snapdragon 835.

Qualcomm has also incorporated foveated rendering with its new headset, which uses an eye tracker to figure out where the user's eye is focused, and lower the resolution of the peripheral vision areas. The latter is particularly interesting because it makes use of "6DoF" (degrees of freedom) technology to track not only the user's body but also the location of real-world objects.

The Snapdragon 845 Mobile VR Reference Design was announced on February 21st, 2018.

This is comprised of several hardware and software components to accelerate on-device AI-enabled user experiences.

The software-based components of Qualcomm's new AI engine include the Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine which is a software framework created to make it easy for developers to choose the optimal Snapdragon core for the user experience they wish to deliver.

The AI engine utilises both hardware and software to produce AI related tasks including speeding up options such as camera effects like bokeh, face unlock, and scene detection. Elliptic Labs' ultrasonic -based gesture controls use the AI Engine.

Furthermore, Qualcomm states this tech features "near flawless synchronization", meaning regardless of which audio sources are connected, the audio playing should be synced well enough that you don't hear any odd timing.

The chipmaker has teamed up with Microsoft for a range of what it calls Always Connected PCs, which take the form of typical laptops but are powered by a Snapdragon processor instead of hardware from Intel or AMD, and will go on sale soon.

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